Google Maps comes to the Isle of Man

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Google Maps comes to the Isle of Man

It's taken quite some time, but it's great to see that Google Maps now has a map of the Isle of Man to go with the imagery they added a little while back. Thanks Google!

Just one day after I write about CloudMade announcing that they are donating their map of the Isle of Man to the OpenStreetMap project (see my post from yesterday), I notice today that Google Maps has added the Isle of Man to their list of places they have map coverage for (though no official announcement I can see on their LatLong blog as of yet).

I had my suspicions that there may have been an imminent release of maps for the Island when I noticed that it wasn't possible to add map data on the Island through their new MapMaker tool that allows you to add your own data to unmapped regions.

It's a shame that this data isn't editable like the CloudMade data that I'll soon be importing into OpenStreetMap though. Zooming into Castletown for a quick close-up look, I've already spotted an error (typo) in the naming of a road: check out Abrory road (should be Arbory Road) running into Castletown. If that was an error in OpenStreetMap data, it'd be a simple job to go in and fix that up so other users could benefit from correct data.

Update: In some places, it's just plain wrong, e.g. this main road in Ballasalla (A34) that has been re-routed down a footpath before joining up with itself again.

Posted in Geographic, Isle of Man at 2:24 PM on Friday 18 July 2008
Tags: Isle of Man maps geodata OpenStreetMap Google Maps